Dear Sasha, I caught my now ex-bf of 2.5 years cheating on me for over the past 2 years. We had met on match.com in September 2009 and I had thought I had found the one. I was 24 going on 25 at the time, he was 26. He was stationed on the naval base in Hawaii for 5 years before moving out to NJ in 2007. When I first met him, I thought, whoa, he is not what I expected as a navy man. He was polite, mild-mannered, straight as an arrow. He wouldn't even cross the street without the crosswalk being on (it's NY, who doesn't jay walk)! We said I love you after 5 months, by 1 year we talked about marriage and children and baby names. He seemed like he had good values and looked as if he was trying to better himself by going to school at night and trying to get his electrical engineering degree.
This all changed the weekend after the NY Revlon Run/Walk on May 5th. His mom is a breast cancer survivor of almost two years, and this year she brought friends from their hometown of CT to join us in the run. He got called into work, and I was stuck with his mom and her four friends for the rest of the day. He told me he was working overnight on Mon and Tues. I didn't hear from him until Friday, and then never heard from again until the following Tuesday. I sent him an e-card telling him a hug is there if he needs it. I saw he opened it, and never tried to reach me.
So I did something I'm not proud of, but I'm so thankful I did. I went into his gmail account and saw that he was emailing women on match during the 9 days we were broken up in March (he didn't give me a reason why he wanted to end things, just that it will get harder in the future when his classes would get harder) I of course got angry, but then I realized that was my first instinct too, to jump back right on the horse. But then, something compelled me to look at his hotmail and yahoo accounts. What I saw in hotmail and yahoo made me shake uncontrollably. He was sending pictures of his headshot and privates to girls since 2010. On Valentines day, I saw he sent out a cock shot. On my birthday he was messaging women on yahoo messenger. So what did I do when all this came into the light? I called up his x gf (who said she caught him
doing something similar), his best friend from his navy days, and his mom. I went cray cray and changed his profiles to my liking. And did I enjoy it? Hell yes I did!
He insisted on coming to my apartment to drop off my stuff that day. With that came a new iPad and clothes and household essentials. He said to me that he was sorry, and he thanked me for being there for his mom when she had cancer. He said I was the person that treated
him best, and this is what I got in return. I told him it was all a lie, and I was a cover all along. I'm the nice girl he brought home to mom and dad, when he is really a cheating monster who disrespects all women. He also said he had quit school this semester. So the whole time I was giving him space to study, he was meeting girls in MY city (NY) and having sex with at leastone (I gchatted with her). One thing that he said, that MIGHT be true (when I asked him why he stayed with me if he had such an active lifestyle of his own), is that the person he was when he was with me, is the person that he hoped to be. (which is moot now) he said he knew what he was doing was wrong, but couldn't answer why he liked doing it.
I'm now filled with hate and anger and resentment. How could he do this to me?
The wound is obviously still very fresh, so yes S, it’s totally understandable that you want to rip his balls off with your teeth and punch them up his ass. What he did was not only emotionally disrespectful, but physically disrespectful as well. So before I go any further, please make sure you go to your doctor to check if he left something else behind.
Now let me be upfront with you. This isn’t going to be easy and it’s going to take a lot of time to get over the hurt he’s caused you. But there is going to have to come a day when you start piecing together the broken feelings, and this might not sound super comforting now, but time really does heal these sorts of wounds.
When I was cheated on I was fragile for months, but I got through it because I eventually took myself out of the equation. I stopped trying to find an answer for why it happened and started realizing it had nothing to do with me. I was an innocent bystander. His decisions destroyed the relationship and I made sure that I wasn’t going to stick around to sift through the carnage.
Part of piecing back your emotional puzzle is letting go of what we once thought and hoped was true. And in order to get there you have to identify and get real with some of the things you may have overlooked or let slide. This may mean opening your eyes to how you’ve allowed people to treat you badly and how you've silenced yourself in the process. It’s a tough one to own up to, but if you can, I promise the healing process will be quicker.
I don’t want to get all new age on your ass, but I heard this Deepak Chopra quote and I have to say it was one of my all-time eye-openers:
"Holding on to resentment is like holding your breath – you will suffocate."
This just goes back to what I was saying before - at a certain point you’re going to have to let go of the anger, the sadness, the pain so that you can finally mourn the loss of the relationship and move on. I hope you do. Keep me posted. I leave you with some Katy Perry. I dislike her very much, but I’ve gotta admit that this song is pretty damn good, and S, it’s some good motivation for your current situation.
